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Related: About this forumDonald Hornig, Last to See First A-Bomb, Dies at 92
In a small shed at the top of a 100-foot-tall steel tower deep in the New Mexico desert, Donald Hornig sat next to the worlds first atomic bomb in the late evening of July 15, 1945, reading a book of humorous essays. A storm raged, and he shuddered at each lightning flash.
It was his second trip to the tower that day as part of the Manhattan Project, the secret American effort to build an atomic bomb. He had earlier armed the device, code-named Trinity, connecting switches he had designed to the detonators.
But J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project, had grown nervous about leaving the bomb alone. He told Dr. Hornig to return to the tower and baby-sit the bomb.
A little after midnight, the weather had improved, and Dr. Hornig was ordered down from the tower. He was the last man to leave and the last to see the weapon before it changed human history.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/science/donald-hornig-a-bomb-scientist-and-brown-president-dies-at-92.html?hpw
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Donald Hornig, Last to See First A-Bomb, Dies at 92 (Original Post)
n2doc
Jan 2013
OP
It worries me, what will happen when nobody alive remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki
phantom power
Jan 2013
#1
phantom power
(25,966 posts)1. It worries me, what will happen when nobody alive remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki
bananas
(27,509 posts)2. It's already a problem, even here on DU.
There's a lot of denial about nuclear weapons.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)3. I wouldn't wish the kind of fear I grew up with on future generations
but then again, at least the fear operated as a kind of motivator. I think it wouldn't be a terrible idea to include that old(!) movie The Day After as part of a standard HS curriculum. And/or reading Hersey's Hiroshima.